(Clockwise from left): Tugba Sunguroglu, Ilayda Akdogan, Gunes Sensoy, Elit Iscan and Doga Zeynep Doguslu
“MUSTANG” My rating: B+ (Opens March 26 at the Tivoli)
97 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
The Oscar-nominated (for best foreign language film) “Mustang” already has been denounced in some quarters as anti-Islamic and/or anti-Turkish.
But the true target of writer/director Deniz Gamze Erguven’s remarkable film is patriarchy, a social system hardly exclusive to any one religion or country.
At first glance this effort from Erguven (born in Turkey but since adolescence a resident of France) and co-writer Alice Winocur looks like a clone of Sofia Coppola’s 1999 “The Virgin Suicides.”
In a seaside Turkish burg five orphaned sisters (their ages range from 10 to 16) are being raised by their grandmother, who does the nurturing, and by a bachelor uncle, a lawyer who by virtue of his sex is considered the head of the household and the last word on all matters involving his wards.
As the film begins the girls have just been freed for summer vacation and celebrate by romping in the surf with several boys from their school. They’re all fully dressed and, by Western standards, their play seems harmless enough.
But some busybody notices the girls riding on the shoulders of the boys as they joust in the waves, and word gets back to Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pecan), who goes ballistic at the impropriety of it all. The girls are accused of salaciousness and subjected to medical exams to ensure that they remain virgins.
It’s not so much that the girls are rebellious as they are naturally happy, rowdy, mischievous young people. Granted, the fierce energy exhibited by these beautiful “mustangs” has an unmistakably sexual component, but the girls know the ground rules. Even the oldest, Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan), who sneaks out at night to be with her boyfriend, confides to her siblings that she practices anal sex so that she can go to her wedding a virgin.
Butler's Cinema Scene 